When Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia ordered the blanket restoration of voting rights to more than 200,000 former felons in April, Republicans who control the state legislature swiftly filed a petition in court, accusing him of exceeding his authority. And when the state’s highest court agreed on Friday, voiding the governor’s declaration in a biting ruling, that briefly seemed to put the matter to rest.

But Mr. McAuliffe is not giving up so easily. And the decision may have laid the groundwork for more legal and political maneuvering in a state that both presidential campaigns regard as a major prize.

After the Virginia Supreme Court said on Friday that the governor could restore voting rights only on a case-by-case basis, Mr. McAuliffe said he would forgo his blanket declaration — and, instead, individually sign about 206,000 restoration orders for ex-felons, including 13,000 who had registered after his April order.

“I cannot accept that this overtly political action could succeed in suppressing the voices of many thousands of men and women,” the governor said in a statement. “The struggle for civil rights has always been a long and difficult one, but the fight goes on.”

Christina Nuckols, Mr. McAuliffe’s deputy communications director, said in a statement on Monday that the governor intended to comply with the court’s ruling and would “expeditiously” review the 13,000 former felons who had already registered, then address the remainder.

To carry that out, the governor would have to sign roughly 385 orders a day until the end of his term. That pace could rankle skeptical Republicans, one of whom warned on Monday that they would go back to court if Mr. McAuliffe tried to accomplish by autopen what the court denied him last week.

“The governor has defiantly said he will find a way to circumvent the court,” said Rob Bell, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates and a former prosecutor. “We will certainly reserve our legal remedies based on what he does.”

The legal dispute carries a political subtext. Republicans have accused the governor of extending voting rights to ex-felons in an effort to expand the Democratic electorate in Virginia, a potential swing state in November’s presidential election. About 45 percent of the ex-felons are black, and, nationally, more than 90 percent of blacks who voted favored President Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Mr. McAuliffe has called his order a matter of basic fairness, and says Republicans want to suppress voter turnout this fall. Most states automatically restore voting rights to felons who have left prison or completed probation, although the procedures and requirements vary.

But the governor’s case for a blanket pardon — one he said would bring Virginia closer to the American mainstream — stumbled badly from the beginning when it turned out that the list of ex-felons to be given voting rights was riddled with errors.

In some Virginia counties, local prosecutors found that the roster included fugitives, felons who were still imprisoned in other states — and even one person who had been deported to Peru. Also among the candidates for voting rights were 132 sex offenders who are being housed together under civil commitment.

Some prosecutors were particularly peeved because Mr. McAuliffe’s order also made ex-felons eligible to serve on the juries that hear their cases. Others noted, however, that potential jurors are rigorously vetted, and that anyone who had rights restored in error would be spotted.

Mr. Bell and other Republicans say Mr. McAuliffe should stick to the process for restoring the vote to former felons that he used in more than 18,000 cases before issuing his April order. Among other provisions, the process treats ex-felons with violent records separately from nonviolent ones.

But the governor appears to have broad power to streamline the approval process should he want to, said A. E. Dick Howard, a University of Virginia law professor who advised Mr. McAuliffe on his voting-rights order.

“There’s no requirement in the Constitution that he give any reason at all for restoring one’s right to vote,” Mr. Howard said in an interview. “He can act on an individual for any reason he pleases, or none at all.”

Mr. Bell said Republicans did not argue that the governor could conduct a review as he chose. But he did argue that reasonable constraints — such as requiring a candidate to make restitution for past crimes when appropriate — would reduce the chances for mistakes like the ones in April’s order.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Virginia’s Governor Vows a Fight for Felons to Vote. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe